Cutting Jobless Benefits Is Blaming The Unemployed

On Saturday, long-term unemployment insurance benefits for 1.3 million unemployed Americans expired. The program began in 1935 to help the army of unemployed workers facing personal economic devastation, not because they were unwilling to work, but because of what the new Keynesian economists labeled "inadequate aggregate demand."

Until Keynes, the unemployed were thought of as "voluntarily unemployed." Keynes argued that most unemployment during recessions or depressions is "involuntary." It is time to re-evaluate why we have so many unemployed workers and how we should best address this issue. History has demonstrated that this is too big a problem, with consequences too far-ranging, to be left to the uninformed political elite.

Republicans in Congress led the fight to cut off unemployment insurance,k arguing, among other things, that the unemployed are too comfortable with the payments they receive and lack incentive to aggressively seek work.

There are unquestionably workers who take advantage of unemployment. They receive benefits and do the minimum to actively seek employment. But even if this described every recipient of unemployment — so what? The belief driving the Republican repudiation of support for the long-term unemployed is more to do with morality than economics. There is a deep-seated belief that any able-bodied adult who is not employed or actively seeking employment is a mooch, living off the hard work of others.

Most Americans would agree that it is desirable to work if possible. But what if there is no work, or the available work does not match the skills of the unemployed? In a deep recession like the one from which we are struggling emerge, finding a job, and particularly, "the right job," can be challenging. Policy should focus on the problem and not a moral sense of superiority.

In November, there were almost 11 million people unemployed nationally. If you are one of those 11 million people, without the support of your past earnings, your friends and family or the government, you are broke, without the means to provide for food, housing, health care, transportation or life itself.

It has been said there is nothing like imminent execution to focus the mind. But even this heightened sense of economic doom will not magically make a job appear. By stopping payments to the unemployed, we are inflicting pain on ourselves. In a weak economy, we need demand for goods and services from as many sources as possible. In a democracy, we need people to feel that they are invested in the system and the system is invested in them.

Congressional Republicans do not seem to appreciate that the 1.3 million unemployed workers who are losing their economic lifeline are acutely aware that their circumstances were already dire and are about to become catastrophic. The Republicans mistakenly believe unemployment is a choice. This takes us back to the pre-Great Depression days when political leaders in the West, before the rise of Keynes, thought this way and prescribed lower wages as the antidote. Sound familiar?

Here is what we should do. First we need to provide unemployment insurance for an indefinite period, until national unemployment falls below an agreed-upon rate, which indicates that the economy is operating healthily.

Second, workers who are unemployed longer than the 26 weeks should be required to work for benefits. The long-term unemployed would receive their unemployment benefits and would be assigned to work in schools, parks, nonprofits and small businesses. These organizations could pick from this pool of unemployed workers and put them to work for up to six months at no cost to the employer. The unemployed workers could leave the job, if they found work in the market. Employers using this program would have to demonstrate that the unemployed workers were not displacing existing employees. Any unemployed workers without jobs would have to enroll in community colleges for retraining.

These are not new ideas. In fact, we can credit our grandparents. They realized that unemployment was not moral issue. It was a reality imposed by conditions, that no matter how hard a worker wanted to work, there still might not be a job. We must stop punishing people for sins they did not commit. It appears that some of our political leaders have learned nothing from history.

Fred McKinney is president and CEO of the Greater New England Minority Supplier Development Council in Bridgeport.